


After

by knight_of_thyme (ravenic)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Beta OT4, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Other, Panic Attacks, Polyamory, Post-Sburb, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, but at least they have each other, the game was shit and they're all a little messed up now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-19 09:21:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3604839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenic/pseuds/knight_of_thyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Game is over, but it will never <i>really</i> be over.  Not for them.</p>
<p>Four teenagers try to keep themselves and each other together after the Game.<br/><i>or</i><br/>John and Rose and Dave and Jade just want to be normal, but they all know that won't ever happen.  So they just try to survive instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. saving each other

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably gonna be super piecemeal and stuff but its basically me thinking about all the shit that happens to four kids with major ptsd after sburb ends.  
> literally so much hurt/comfort and angst/fluff how did i even do this

Rose was sitting on the couch, huddled into a small ball. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped tightly around them. She stared at the wall with blank, dead eyes, and Jade could almost smell her fear.

Jade had to resist the urge to whine. It always made her anxious to see her pack unhappy. But at least this time, she knew why.

Rose was afraid of Grimdark. Even though the Game was over and everything was normal now (Jade knew that that was a lie, though – nothing will ever be normal again), the former Seer was still terrified of going dark again, of hearing voices in her head. Jade knew. It kept Rose up at night, made her tense and nervous and high-strung. Jade didn’t like it. But at least she knew how to fix this problem.

She padded into Rose’s room, bare feet making no sound on the hardwood floor. She dug around for a while in Rose’s yarn stuff until she found a random unfinished project – a sweater, maybe – and carried it back into the living room to Rose. She almost laughed at herself. _Look at me, being a good little doggy and bringing my humans their belongings. But she didn’t care._

Rose looked surprised when Jade plopped the bundle of yarn and needles in her lap. Jade didn’t say anything, instead going to the TV and turning it on. She started one of Rose’s favorite Squiddles episodes, settling beside her on the couch, not close enough to be invading the Seer’s personal space but close enough that she was _there_ (she was still the Witch of Space, at least a little. She knew these things).  
After a few minutes, Rose began to knit. She was still tense, and there was still darkness in her eyes, but she was knitting. Jade began to relax.  
It took three episodes, but finally Rose let out a breath and the tension left her shoulders and the knitting became smoother and her eyes were normal again. She even let out a little laugh at the antics of the brightly colored squid-jellyfish things on the TV screen.  
And Jade could breathe again.

. . .

Every once in a while, John got so overwhelmed with everything that it would begin to spill over and make him start to come apart at the seams. That would be the moment when Rose had to forcibly sit him down at the kitchen table or on one of their beds and let him talk.  


They could sit like that for hours, John talking and Rose listening. The hardest part was knowing when to question him, make him think harder about things, take apart his own thoughts and see what they meant, and when to just shut up and let him pour everything out.  


John was usually so happy and carefree, but even he could feel dark and weighed down. Fortunately, once he has unloaded his heart to Rose, he would usually be okay. Rose could handle it. Hell, she had been Grimdark – she could deal with one teenage derp’s angst. It was her way of helping, and she was always so glad to see the normal John come back, once she had removed the shadows of his sadness. She should be the one with shadows, not John. She was the one the darkness followed, not him. He deserved the happiness, the light. And she would do anything to make sure he had it.

. . .

_Where the hell did she even go?_  


Dave was ready to give up. He had been looking for Jade for fifteen minutes ( _sixteen minutes and twenty-three seconds_ , his internal clock said), with the original intention of asking her if she wanted to go to the lake with him (she was obsessed with the place), and he was getting tired of it. _That girl can hide anywhere. What am I supposed to do, shake a treat box?_  


_… Actually, that’s probably a pretty good idea, when it comes to dogtier-girl._  


He had only checked her room briefly, and out of a lack of knowing where else to look, he went back.  


At first, the Witch’s room looked empty, but then there was a tiny movement, a soft rustle of cloth, and Dave spotted her.  


Jade was crouched under her desk, huddled in a corner and looking miserable.  


“Jade?”  


She glanced up at him, green eyes glowing in the semi-darkness, and then returned to her curled-up position.  


It took Dave a moment to figure out what was wrong, but finally his brain fastened on the answer. _She’s scared of Space._  


It had happened once or twice before, when Jade would get overstimulated and agoraphobic for a while. Dave guessed it was an aftereffect of the Game, the way Rose could still sometimes See and would still get scared of her memories of darkness, of things she heard or said or did, or the way John felt everything, could sense things on the air and sometimes got overwhelmed by it all, or the way that Dave still felt Time, every second ticking past without stopping, _tick tock tick tock tick tock_ , how it always threatened to drive him insane, and the powerful need to protect them all – the result of being a Knight, he supposed. Jade could still sense Space, and sometimes it was too much for her. So her coping mechanism was to hide in a small space until it went away.  


Dave’s need to help kicked in promptly and an idea came to him. He left the room, trying not to notice Jade’s surprised, almost hurt face at seeing him abandon her, and went to his own. He grabbed his blanket – the old one with the card suits that now meant so much more than just symbols for a deck of cards –his iPod and a pair of earbuds, and went back to Jade.  


Jade jumped a little when Dave reentered her room. She stared at him, silent, wide-eyed, as he tossed the blanket over the desk, securing it with some books, and then crawled underneath beside her. It was cramped with two people, but he could feel her relax a little as the Space went away, blocked out by a card-suit blanket and filled up by a teenage albino Knight.  


Without a word, Dave plugged the earbuds into his iPod and offered one to Jade. She took it with a confused look on her face. Still saying nothing, he put the other one in his ear and pressed “shuffle.”  


~

They stayed like that for a long time. At first, they were just sitting beside each other, but it wasn’t long before Jade’s head was on Dave’s shoulder, and his arm had wrapped around her body, pulling her close. Eventually she fell asleep, leaving Dave with a snoring armful of dog-girl. He rolled his eyes with a dramatic sigh, but didn’t bother moving until an exasperated Rose ( _“Where have you been?”_ ) found them two hours later.

. . .

Sometimes, John thinks Dave has it the hardest. The Game is over, but Dave is still the Knight. He still has the irresistible urge to protect the other three, and maybe always will. He can’t stop it. He always worries about them, always wants – needs – to keep them safe. And John can see how it eats at him, how it wears the Knight down until he’s exhausted.  


But even then, Dave doesn’t get a break. John has had to wake him up from his nightmares, which are the most frequent of all four of them even though he sleeps the least.  


John doesn’t know what to do about all this, about everything, about their lives now. He misses Before The Game, when they were just normal kids, normal friends. But he knows that that time will never come back, no matter what Time shenanigans Dave tries, no matter how hard Jade works to take them to a happier place, no matter how long Rose searches for memories from back then, no matter how high John flies. It won’t come back.  


So he tries his best. He stick with Dave, tries to support him as much as he can, tries to let him know that they can take care of themselves, just a little. He knows that it won’t stop a Knight, but he hopes that it will give his friend a little bit of peace, somewhere in his Time-tangled head, to know that they aren’t helpless, even though he will never be able to stop trying to protect them.  


It’s what Knights do, protect people, but sometimes John hates it. They’re just kids, except that they aren’t. Not anymore. Not after the Game. They have died and worse, and they can’t be normal kids ever again. They have too many memories of experiences that kids don’t have, can’t have, and there is no going back. Even though he knows that, John never stops wishing that they could go back to normal, that he could stop remembering everything and that Rose could never hear horrorterrors again and that Jade could be the happy puppy she’s so good at pretending to be and that Dave could stop tearing himself apart trying to care for them all. But wishing never did anything.  


And so they go on, and John sees how Dave takes on more responsibilities than any of them, tries to do everything and show nothing, and he knows that the Strider won’t stop, can’t stop, and so he does everything he can to help him. Sometimes, it seems like his efforts do nothing, but sometimes he’ll notice Dave looking at him with those red, red eyes, something akin to gratitude showing, and he will know that trying can make all the difference.


	2. nightmares

John’s eyes opened. It was dark outside, and his clock read 2:17 AM in harsh red light. He was just about to roll over and go back to sleep when he heard a tiny sound from outside his room.

He sat up. It would be easy to just put it off as a random noise and go back to sleep (he was really, really tired), but random noises didn’t wake him up. Random noises relating to his friends, however, did.

Quietly, John got up. He went to his door, bare feet making no sound on the floor, and looked out. He wasn’t sure from which of the three other rooms the sound had come from. _Well, I’ll just have to check._ It was almost funny, to be the one wandering around in the middle of the night. That was usually Dave’s job, nowadays. The Knight rarely slept, and often spent the dark hours wandering aimlessly throughout the house, checking in on the other three every hour or two. John could remember opening his eyes to see an aviator-less, shirtless Dave standing at his doorway more than once, and although that sounded creepy, it really wasn’t.

At the moment, however, said Knight was actually in his bed. His computer was on his lap, some shitty anime playing on the screen. His aviators were folded neatly on his bedside table, and, for once, he was asleep. He didn’t even wake up when John quietly closed the laptop and placed it carefully on the floor.

After Dave, John peeked into Jade’s room. She always left her door wide open, and even before he looked, the Heir could hear her snoring. She was lying in a contortionist-twist, head-to-foot in the bed, the sheets tangled and twisted around her body. Her enormous sleep shirt had slid up to reveal a good four or five inches of belly, which John was tempted to go to and rub the way he would a dog’s tummy. He and the others had discovered that it elicited the hilarious foot-kicking reaction of a normal dog from the Witch. He resisted the urge (mostly because it was 2 AM and he didn’t really want a grumpy dog-girl after him), and went on to Rose’s room.

Rose kept her door almost shut, leaving it just open enough that it wasn’t a “keep-out” sign to the others. He glanced inside, and at first, nothing seemed wrong. Then the Seer made another tiny noise, almost lost in the ordinary sounds of a sleeping house, and all of John’s senses kicked into hyper-alert.

“Rose?” he whispered. No answer. John crept closer to his friend’s bed. She appeared to be sleeping normally, but then he looked closer. He knew the girl well enough to recognize that the expression on her face was not one of peaceful slumber.

“Rose. Rose, wake up.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. “Rose.”

Without warning, violet eyes opened and the girl sat up suddenly. Her breath caught in her throat, but then John was there, his arms around her in a gentle embrace. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, Rose. Wake up.”

The Seer sighed, most of the tension leaving her body as she allowed her fingers to lace together around John’s body. “I’m sorry to have woken you, John,” she said quietly, her voice only trembling slightly.

John pulled back a little, frowning. “Don’t be. Were you having a nightmare?”

Rose nodded slightly. John’s frown deepened. He only remembered rare instances of Rose having nightmares.

The girl gave the boy a little half-smile. She could read him just as easily as always. “I do have them, sometimes,” she said in the same soft voice. “I suppose I don’t make very much noise. I usually wake up before I disturb any of you.”

John growled with irritation, surprising both of them. “You should,” he said, and continued when he saw Rose’s confusion. “You should disturb us. Wake us up, I mean. You shouldn’t go through those alone.” They all had nightmares. And there was almost always another one of the others there to wake them up and bring them back to reality.

Rose sighed. She lay back down without speaking again, and seemed about to fall asleep again when John’s voice made her open her eyes again.

“Budge over.”

She glanced at him, her face furrowed in confusion, and he shoved her again. “I don’t wanna go back to my bed. I’m laaaaaaaazy,” he said in a doofy voice, and she almost smiled.

“Very well, then.” The Seer moved over, making room for the Heir on her narrow bed. He burrowed under the lavender quilt, and within moments was snoring into her shoulder.  
Who knew whether it was for him or for her that he stayed. She was grateful either way.

. . .

Dave was doing his regular rounds, which mostly meant wandering aimlessly throughout the house, when he heard John cry out.  


In an instant, his entire body had gone into combat mode, and he was already halfway to the Heir’s room by the time he realized that he was running.  


He stopped at the doorway into John’s room, and that was when he realized that his friend was having a nightmare.  


John was tossing and turning, his blanket on the floor, his sheets tangled around him. He was talking, nightmare-nonsense words, making no sense, but somehow stringing together into a memory of the Game.  


_Well, what else do we dream of, now?_  


“John.” Dave moved closer to the bed, reaching out to touch John’s shoulder. “John, wake up. John!”  


At his touch, the Heir jerked, eyes flying open but not quite seeing clearly yet, and he would probably have fallen out of the bed if Dave hadn’t caught him. “Whoa whoa John wake up it’s okay!” Dave moved him back onto the bed, ending up there too because John wouldn’t let go of him.  


John was shaking and wide-eyed, breathing hard, and Dave could feel the other boy’s heart beating fast beneath his hands. For a few moments, Dave focused on calming the Heir down, until he took a deep (still shaky, but better now) breath, and released his death grip on Dave’s arm. “Sorry,” he whispered.  


“Don’t be,” the Knight said, his voice tight. “It was a nightmare. We all have nightmares. Forget it. It wasn’t real.”  


John laughed. It was a little shaky, but he was almost back to okay. John usually was able to bounce back from his nightmares fairly fast, but Dave had learned that he didn’t sleep well after them and that it was best to do something to distract him.  


Ten minutes later _(nine minutes and fifty-seven seconds)_ , both boys were in the living room, the TV screen casting an otherworldly glow across their faces, Xbox controllers in their hands. They played for less than an hour before Dave looked over and saw John slumped on the couch, controller lying in limp hands, almost snoring. He rolled his eyes, but turned off the TV and carried his closest friend (well, one of three, but who’s counting?), back to his bed.  


He ended up staying with the Heir for the rest of the night. He only slept in minutes, a light doze that broke at every sound. But nothing happened for the rest of the night, and the Knight listened to his iPod in peace until the sun rose, when he got up silently and returned to his room, leaving John to wake hours later with only blurry memories of the night before, memories of terrifying darkness broken by a guardian red. Like so many nights before.

. . .

 

The screaming woke everyone almost immediately. Dave came bolting from where he had been eating a donut in the kitchen, John nearly ran into his door because he was in such a rush, and Rose came very close to breaking her own face on Dave’s when she came out of her room at top speed.  


It took less than five seconds for all three to get from where they had been to Jade’s room. The Witch was thrashing in her bed, her blanket on the floor, the sheets twisted around her. She hadn’t stopped screaming except to make frightening roary-growl noises that shouldn’t have physically been able to come from a human throat.  


John stopped dead at the door. He loved Jade, adored her, but when she went mad during her nightmares, he was petrified. She was like a pet dog that had suddenly gone rabid. Even Dave had to admit that it was terrifying.  


Dave and Rose were the ones who went forward. Shaking Jade felt like putting his hand in a lion’s mouth, but Dave would have done anything to make her stop screaming like that.  


Her eyes flew open, radioactive-green in the dark, and she snarled, so wild and feral that Dave actually stepped back from the bed, pulling his hands back.  


The Witch sprang up, the sheets pulling and tangling, and she thrashed a moment, freeing herself, before crouching with her back against the wall, growling at her three closest friends in the world.  


Dave was about to go forward, go to her, wake her up – _wake up wake up wake_ up, _Jade, we aren’t in the Game anymore! WAKE UP!_ – when Rose stopped him with a hand against his chest.  


The Seer didn’t look directly at Jade as she slowly approached her, keeping her eyes focused on a point somewhere to the left of the girl’s head. Dave and John watched as she slowly extended one hand, holding it palm-up, open and unaggressive. “Jade,” she said calmly, eyes still on the wall, “wake up. It’s all right. We’re safe.”  


Jade snarled at her. It almost physically hurt to watch the Witch. She obviously wasn’t seeing the other three as them, but as some kind of monsters that her nightmares had created in her head.  


Rose continued speaking in the same low, calm voice, hoping to break through. Then the light in Jade’s eyes changed, and, hopeful, Rose reached forward a little.  


In a blur of movement, Jade had darted forward and sunk her teeth into Rose’s hand. John gasped and Dave moved as if to try to get her off, but Rose stopped them both. Her face was tight with pain – dog-girl teeth were sharp – but she hadn’t made a sound when the other girl had bitten her. “Jade. Wake up.”  


And suddenly, she did. Jade released Rose’s hand and began to cry. Then Rose did move forward, wrapping her arms around her, although keeping her bitten hand from touching her. John went to her too, sitting on her other side. Dave stood before them for a moment before reaching out and scratching lightly at the back of the Witch's head, near where her dog-ears used to be.  


Jade was the one who needed them the most after her nightmares. Sometimes, the others needed to be left alone, or at least have some space, but Jade recovered fastest if all three were there, preferably within cuddling distance.  


It would have been nice to stay there, just as they were, but Rose’s hand, although not seriously injured, needed seeing to. So they moved to the kitchen in a strange clump, and Dave cleaned and wrapped the bite while Rose sat quietly, Jade still glued to her side. At one point, the dog-girl had attempted to pull away, looking guiltily at the Seer’s bitten hand, but Rose did not let her go, and she stopped trying with a grateful sigh.  


It was clear that they wouldn’t be going to sleep anytime soon, so Dave set up a movie – chosen at random without even a glance at the cover, it wasn’t as if it mattered – and they all piled onto the couch, Jade in the middle with Rose and John on either side and Dave beside John, his arm reaching behind the Heir’s head to tangle in Jade’s hair, scratching her scalp lightly.  


Two movies later, the sun was just barely rising and all four former Game players were fast asleep, tangled into a pile so mixed up that it would be hard to tell what body parts belonged to who.  


A nose twitched, not a dog any more but still close. Jade opened one eye, glancing around. When she saw Rose, John, and Dave curled around her, all of them still sound asleep, the Witch smiled, sighed deeply, and went back to sleep knowing that for now, she was safe from the nightmares.

. . .

John had been happy to see Dave actually go to bed that night, but he retracted that statement when he woke up to shouting. He fell out of his bed, narrowly missing cracking his skull on his bedside table, and tripped approximately three times on his way Dave’s room.  


He got there first. Jade had gotten tangled in her sheets and had to get herself out of them first, and Rose had been exhausted from pulling an all-nighter the night before and was slow. So John was the first into Dave’s room.  


It was like when Jade had her nightmares. The thrashing, the screaming. Dave slept less in general, but when he did, his nightmares were the most frequent of all four, and, arguably, the worst.  


“Dave!” John shook Dave’s shoulders, desperate to wake him up.  


And wake he did. Just not the way John wanted him to.  


The Knight’s scarlet eyes flew open, and before John knew what was happening, he had surged up from the bed, knocking John back. The Heir lost his balance and toppled to the floor, Dave on top of him, and had the breath knocked out of him on impact. Then Dave’s hands wrapped around his neck and he couldn’t think clearly any more.  


_Funny how the Heir of Breath is getting choked to death by his best friend,_ John thought, struggling weakly against Dave’s stranglehold. The Knight’s red eyes were unfocused, seeing not the boy he was slowly suffocating, but probably some Game monster. He always wants to protect us. So why is he trying to kill me?  


John was on the verge of blacking out when rescue came in the form of a screaming dog-girl in an enormous atom-printed t-shirt and black shorts, her thick, dark hair flying everywhere and illuminated by moonlight. She tackled Dave at full speed, sending both of them tumbling across the room.  


John gasped in a precious breath of air and then proceeded to cough his lungs out. Rose, who had been right behind Jade, was at his side instantly, taking his hands and helping him up, and then holding him up when it was discovered that his legs didn’t feel up to taking his weight yet.  


Jade had pinned Dave to the floor, holding his wrists above his head to keep him from clawing her face –evident from the red marks across her cheeks –screaming, _“Wake up, Dave, wake up,”_ over and over. He continued struggling for a moment, and then suddenly stopped. The Knight stared at the Witch, blood-red eyes meeting radioactive green.  


And then Dave gasped and his entire body went limp, the fight draining from it completely. Jade let go and sat back, breathing hard. Both of them had tears in their eyes. Slowly, Dave rolled onto his side and curled into a ball.  


After a moment of hesitation, Jade lay down like a dog beside him, and tentatively took his hand. He squeezed it so hard his knuckles turned white, and Jade made a whining sound and curled closer.  


John and Rose slowly went over to the two. John lay on Dave’s other side, not quite touching the Knight but near enough for them to be able to feel each others’ heat. Rose sat beside Dave’s head, and slowly began to run her fingers through his hair.  


It took almost half an hour, soundless, motionless, but then Dave sighed and some of the tension left his body. Jade huffed happily, and John smiled slightly. They would be okay. Just like every time before, and every time after, they would be okay. They always would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck im not satisfied with any of these segments or any of the future ones but im afraid ill edit it to death and not post anything if i dont get them up soon so fuckit heres more screwed-up beta ot4 i dont know what im doing


	3. school

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i dont know if i should be putting detailed warnings for each of these. i might go back and do that later, but at least theres general warning stuff in the tags??? idk this chapter has flashback thingies of the not so pleasant sort, dissection mentions, hallucinations i guess, and like claustrophobia sort of stuff, so be warned.

P.E. was one of the few classes Dave could actually stand, mostly because he was so much better than anyone else that they had all given up trying to beat him. Seriously. He was pretty sure the teacher thought he was Superman or God or something. It wasn’t the other students’ fault that they hadn’t had practically three whole lifetimes in constant survival mode and fighting giant monsters, but the Knight was pretty sure that he would have beaten any of them even before Sburb, no problem.

Also, Rose was in the class. Having another of the four with them made anything more comfortable, more okay, no matter what the class was. She wasn’t stellar, but she did pretty well overall, and her reflexes were nearly as good as Dave’s.

Class was going just fine until another student – didn’t know her name, didn’t care – fell and cut her hand. It was pretty bad, and probably would need stitches, but all it took was one look at the blood smearing the girl’s arm to flip Dave’s mind back in time. There were any of a hundred scenarios to choose from, and every one ended in death. John’s death, Jade’s death, Rose’s death, Dave’s own death. It hardly mattered. Blood meant battle meant death meant failure. Meant Dave failing the others. Again.

Dave hadn’t noticed that he had stopped breathing until Rose touched his hand. He nearly punched her – probably would have if she wasn’t Rose. His nails had left red crescents in his palms.

Rose took one look at the Knight, paler than normal, trembling, fists clenched and nails cutting into his palms, and grabbed his hand. Without even glancing at the rest of the class, most of which was gathered around the injured girl, she left, tugging Dave behind her. He did not resist, but wasn’t actively following either.

Either nobody noticed two students wandering away from their class, or they were all too afraid of the both of them to even mention the fact that they were blatantly walking out. It didn’t matter. Dave wasn’t really seeing any of them, or even the ground in front of him. Blood and death. Doomed timelines every time he turned around, dead bodies with every step he took, _the end_ with every second that passed.

“Dave.”

Oh. They had stopped moving. Rose was staring at him; her lavender eyes should have been frightening and unnerving (she could see everything, but what else would you expect?), but hell. He had red eyes. Shit was weird.

Red eyes. Red blood. The memories came back stronger than before, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe – sword through his chest, bullets in his back, fire all around him, too much too deep too dark –

_“Dave.”_

He looked up. Rose stood before him, concern in her eyes, but something was wrong. Her skin was dark, gray like troll-skin, but terribly unnatural where the trolls’ was fitting. Black tears ran dark trails like tar down her cheeks. Blood stained her blouse and trailed from the corners of her mouth, and her eyes were white as death.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“What?”

Dave’s knees gave out and he sank slowly to the ground. _Look how weak you are,_ his mind screamed, _you could never save her, not from the monsters, not from the darkness inside. You are a failure. You are the reason they died._

“I’m sorry.” It didn’t matter how sorry he was, she had died. They had all died. He couldn’t do anything right, and he couldn’t save them.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry you died. I’m sorry I fucked up. I screwed it all up, there were so many doomed timelines, I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t get it right and you died. You died and Jade died and John died, over and over and over, because I’m a shitty Knight.” He couldn’t stop. “I – _fuck,_ Rose, I fucking left you behind. I left you alone in an empty timeline and turned myself into a shitty bird, and look how well _that_ turned out, even something that’s only part-me can’t do anything right. You all died so many times and it’s all my fucking fa –”

“Stop.”

Dave blinked. Suddenly, it was all gone. He was in normal Earth clothes, kneeling on the ground in front of his ectobiosister – his ectobiosister whose skin was its normal porcelain-pale, eyes their ordinary (for her) shade of lavender. No black tears, no blood, no monstrous whispering. No death.

Rose’s normally-relaxed hands were curled tightly into fists, her mouth set in a hard line. Dave nearly fell over in shock when he saw that her eyes were shining with carefully-restrained tears. “Rose – I – what? –”

“Don’t you ever say that again.” His sister’s voice was hard as steel. “Never. Don’t you ever blame yourself for what that – that _game_ did to us. Dave, don’t you understand? It’s not you – it never was you. The role of Knight was what was doomed, not you. The Game was what ruined our lives, not you running through every timeline, sacrificing everything you had and more just to try to get us out. Dave, you didn’t fail us. You saved us.”

The former Seer of Light knelt before the former Knight of Time. She pulled off his precious aviators, laying them neatly to the side. There were no tears. Knights don’t cry.  
Rose took his face in her hands, lavender eyes meeting scarlet. “You saved us.” She was whispering now. “All the times we did not die, all the times you told us what not to do to avoid losing the Game – that was you. If any of us failed, it was me. A Seer should have known how to win without making so many doomed timelines. Everything you did got us through the Alpha timeline. Dave, don’t you see? You are as much to blame that we are all alive. You did not fail us. You never failed us.”

. . .

Normally, John liked biology class well enough. He had it with Jade, who was so enthusiastic that she could make anyone like science classes, and he was good at it and it was interesting. What more did it need?  


Unfortunately, normal was a rare thing for them, and today was just not going to be that.  


It started when the teacher said the words “frog dissection.” John wasn’t a huge fan of dissection stuff, but Jade seemed pretty interested – heck, it was science. She loved anything sciencey.  


But frogs. The frog part was where the trouble came in. John had never really been around for that bit, but Jade had been the one in charge of breeding and raising the Genesis Frog, and Dave had said that she had been really in to it and really enthusiastic about it (again, science. Jade loved science).  


So Jade liked frogs. And they were dissecting dead frogs today in biology class. In retrospect, John should maybe have seen this coming.  


She seemed okay during the discussion part, and even when the frogs actually came out. So when they had their frog and were looking down at it, dead little preserved thing, laid out and ready for dissection, John looked up at Jade and was a little thrown when he saw her face.  


Jade was staring at the frog like it was her dead mother. Her eyes were huge and watery, filled with tears on the verge of spilling over, and her lips were trembling. Her hands were shaking and she was dead-pale, and for a moment John thought she was going to pass out then and there.  


But she just sat there, looking at their dead frog as if it was the most important thing in the world and it had just been destroyed (which, to a Space player who had created the Genesis Frog, was maybe truer than it might have been). Jade Harley was staring at a dead highschool biology dissection frog and looking utterly shattered.  


John was uncertain for a minute, but then he pulled himself together. Quickly and quietly, he stood up and went to the front of the room, although Jade gave no indication that she had even noticed him.  


“I need to take Jade,” he said quietly to the teacher, who looked doubtful until he glanced over at Jade. Even he could tell that something was very, very wrong, much more than just some student who didn’t have a strong stomach. He nodded, and John went to rescue his ectobiosister.  


*

Jade held herself mostly together for the time it took for John to gather their things and lead her by the hand out of the class room. He took her outside, knowing that she always felt better when she was outdoors, but the moment the two of them sat down on the shady grass beneath a big old black oak tree, her breathing picked up, getting faster and faster.  


“Hey, hey, hey, Jade, come on, it’s okay,” John babbled, squeezing at the former Witch’s hand. She didn’t seem to hear anything he said, still staring at nothing, her breathing growing even faster, and the tears filling her eyes finally spilled over, streaming down her cheeks and dripping from her chin.  


John grabbed his melting-down ectobiosister, wrapped his arms around her, and wished that the others were there. Jade always recovered fastest if she was surrounded by all three of the others, but there had been no time to go get either Dave or Rose from their classes, and he clearly couldn’t leave now. So he just had to be enough, take up enough space, for all of them.  


Jade gasped when John touched her, but she didn’t pull away. That was a good sign. “Look, Jade,” John said, desperate for something to distract his friend, “there’s a caterpillar on that leaf!”  


It was lame, even John knew that, but Jade actually looked at it, instead of that awful staring-at-nothing that she had been doing. “Black Swallowtail Butterfly,” she mumbled. “Or Caterpillar, I guess.”  


_It worked._ “Why’s it sunny today when it was all gross and rainy yesterday?” John asked. Almost on auto pilot, Jade started to explain about weather patterns and warm fronts and changing weather, and John watched with relief as the horrible blankness faded, bit by bit, from her green eyes, slowly being replaced by that sparkle that only appeared when she was doing her science thing.  


It took an hour, and they both missed their entire next class (it didn’t matter, who cared about math right now anyway), but after explaining the science of thunderstorms, meteors, and alligator biology, Jade looked mostly okay. She was going to need some serious snuggling when they got home, but she would hold for now. Just no more dissection frogs.  


As they went to their next-next classes (John wasn’t sure how he was going to explain his spontaneous absence from pre-calculus, but he didn’t really care), Jade reached out and took his hand. She swung them together, fingers interlaced, as they walked, and when it was time for her to go down the left side hall way and John to continue straight (why was English so far away?), she reached out and hugged him tightly.  


“Thanks, John,” she whispered, and then skipped off to art (lucky witch), leaving John to stare after her until he shook himself and continued on, trying not to be late for yet another class.  


Nothing would ever be normal for them again, but they could hold each other together, enough for them to get by. Jade would never be able to look at frogs again without bursting in to tears. She could distract herself with science and caterpillars, but the truth remained. They couldn’t forget it; they just had to live on despite it.  
They had all lost a lot. But they still had each other. That was enough. It had to be.

. . .

Rose could not hear her English teacher. There were whispers filling her ears, singing and hissing and screaming, in no language humans could speak (except she had, spilling black blood from her mouth, from her eyes, her skin melted gray and her hair burned white and her eyes dead and black). The edges of her vision writhed with shadows, twisting and turning, tying themselves into knots that were not possible in this dimension. Eyes glowed black and teeth glistened needle-sharp and bloody, and she could not see and she could not hear and her AP English Literature classroom was filled with monsters.  


Maybe her teacher said something as she stumbled out of the room. She couldn’t hear her. The eyes of her staring classmates were solid lightless black, and their confused murmurs were quiet screams of dying minds. The door slammed shut behind her, but the monsters followed.  


She staggered down the hall, trying not to trip over the coils of dark that seethed across the worn linoleum tiles of the school hall way floor. Searching through the haze of shadow that layered across her vision like gauze, Rose Lalonde made her way towards the nearest of the only three things in the entire world – the entire universe – that could save her.  


*

Dave was mostly-dozing in his Geography class when he suddenly felt something in the part of his mind that was the Knight part, the guardian part. Something was wrong.  


On instinct – Knight instinct, something that had never failed him– he glanced through the small window of the classroom door. He was sitting near the back, so it was at a bit of a strange angle, but he could see enough.  


Rose stood on the other side. To some people, she might have looked a little haggard, like she could maybe do with some warm soup or a good night’s sleep (ha. Sleep. None of them had slept well since the Game.), but if they had been brave enough to truly meet her eyes, they would have lost their minds in fear.  


But Dave was a Knight. He could look a darkened Rose in the eye and see the darkness. And he could save her from it. He was a Knight.  


But he couldn’t do his job sitting in a Geography class room while Rose drowned in darkness outside. Dave ignored his teacher’s protests as he stood and walked quickly down the aisle and out the door, closing it on the teacher’s voice. They could go screw themselves. He had work to do.  


*

There was nothing that could be said, no magic words that would drive the darkness away. But Dave was Dave, and so he talked any way. About anything and everything and nothing, rambling on and on as he led Rose through the empty halls in search of somewhere open and sun-filled and clean and clear.  


It was obvious that Rose could barely hear him, maybe not at all, and just as obvious that she could hardly see where she was going, clinging to Dave with a desperation that she only ever showed when she was like this, seeing and hearing monsters and whispers and pure madness.  


At last _(too long, he had taken so long, but she would be okay. There was light in her that even the monsters couldn’t extinguish)_ , they were at the doors and finally outside. Dave led Rose carefully down the stairs, taking care that she did not lose her footing and fall on the concrete, and out on to a nearby grassy meadow. He settled the both of them gently on the ground, and Rose clung to him like a drowning girl.  


Dave might have been a Knight, but there was only so much that he could do, in the end. In the end, they were Rose’s monsters. But he could be there. He could bring her outside, where the sunlight could burn away the shadows, he could sit by her side, solid and strong and real, he could talk, letting his voice drive the whispers away. It wasn’t much. But it was enough.  


He talked and talked and talked, Rose clinging to him like some sort of black-lipstick-wearing octopus, and when she responded to one of his inane comments with a dry retort, he knew that the fight was over. Just one battle, one of many, many past and many yet to come (and how strange it was now for everything to be linear for him, after so long _(so much time)_

. . .

Usually, John was mostly okay. He missed flying, but that was about the only thing he had on his official Things John Misses About Playing The Game list. But he coped. Usually. Mostly.  


Not right now, though. Right now, John was in a very, very crowded hallway, and he was beginning to lose his breath.  


He was fine, at first, and then there was suddenly a flood of people, massing out of the classrooms on their ways to other classrooms, and John was caught in the tide. But he couldn’t fly to get away. Even if he still had had his powers, he was in a hallway filled with people. Where would he fly to?  


And so he was stuck, and so he was panicking, and so he could not breathe.  


John took a few stumbling steps, staggering, and was about to fall on his knees when someone grabbed him by the arms, lifted him up, and dragged him in to an empty classroom. He might have panicked even more, but even through the fog that was graying his vision, he could recognize those hands. Dark, tanned brown, with short blunt nails not edged in dirt for the moment but exhibiting that sign more often than not when they were outside of school, strong and tough. Jade’s hands.  


The Witch’s voice filtered in through the pounding in John’s ears. “– ohn, John, John, come on, listen to me, breathe, John, _John_ –”  


The former Heir of Breath inhaled with a deep, desperate gasp, only just then realizing that he had barely been breathing at all. The flood of air almost choked him, and he coughed, feeling Jade wrap her arms tightly around him. The gray was clearing from his eyes, the thudding sound of his own blood rushing in his ears was fading, the tingling sensation disappearing from his fingers. The classroom was empty except for the two of them, the crushing tide of human bodies locked out in the hall and away from them.  


John could feel his heart beat returning to normal, his breathing slowing. The air in the room was still, but not stagnant. It still moved, it was still alive. Even though his powers were gone, traces remained, just like with Jade and Rose and Dave’s powers. He could feel the air whooshing in and out of Jade’s lungs, and his own. But even though the air drew his mind, tugging at memories of power, of moving air like it was solid, Jade’s body – something real, something truly solid – brought him back to the ground. She didn’t hold him there, trap and pin him the way the pressing masses in the hall way had; she was just there, solid, breathing, stabilizing.  


John took a deep breath and let it out. Jade felt the change and sat back a little. Her green eyes were still filled with concern. “John, are you okay? I was leaving Spanish class and I felt – _something_ –” a shiver ran through her body and John automatically reached out to brush it away – they all got these things sometimes, usually when something was happening to one of the others, but Jade got them more often than any of them, except perhaps Dave (Space aspect versus Knight title – it all balanced out at a certain point).  


John smiled at her. He was still a little shaky, his hands still trembling just a little bit, but he was okay now. He was breathing again, at least. “I’m okay, Jade. I promise.”  


Jade huffed a little, clearly not entirely believing him, but she let go of him just a little bit more and the furrow faded a bit more from between her eyebrows. “Okay,” she agreed.  


“Now let’s go,” John said, standing up. “We’re gonna be late to lunch!”  
They walked through the thankfully now more empty hall ways side by side, but John never let go of Jade’s hand.

. . . . .

The silence of the library went unbroken. Rose had a new book, as thick as her psychology textbook and just as interesting, and Dave was messing with his phone. John had a math book open but was obviously not reading it, and Jade was daydreaming, gazing vaguely out the window. They sat quietly, no sound but the occasional turning of pages, all four pressed together on the couch. Rose’s heartbeat rushed softly in her ears, and she could feel Jade sigh deeply and lean more against her. John’s breath tickled her arm lightly. Dave’s phone clicked and tapped quietly from somewhere the Heir’s other side, a metronome marking the smooth, soft passage of time.  


They were alive. The Seer of Light may have been blind to all but dark whispers, but the Knight of Time had done his job, bloody as it was. There was still breath in the Heir’s lungs, and the Witch of Space was no mad dog. Four players had gone into the game, and four players had returned. They were different now – unchangeably so, and perhaps not for the better, but they were alive.  


Space, breath, time, light. Funny how in a reconstructed-Earth library, the four could come together in a way so natural, and so perfect.  


Rose smiled and turned the page.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i kept not posting this because i still didnt like it but i finally figured out why. i wrote this thing almost three years ago. its old. thats why i dont like it.  
> but oh well. here it is anyway.  
> this is the last bit i have done for now (hence why its marked as complete) but in theory i might add stuff in the future. who knows. but for the moment, heres after done and thrown out into the internet for people to do whatever they do with random fics written years ago by random people. i dont know.

**Author's Note:**

> these are so short fffff  
> (the other bits are at least slightly longer i promise)


End file.
